Furthering human rights and sustainable development in Africa
What are the linkages between the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063 (The Africa We Want)? How can African state institutions base their implementation and monitoring of the two agendas on human rights standards? These are some of the main questions raised and analyzed in a new report launched by The Danish Institute for Human Rights in collaboration with NANHRI – the Network of African National Human Rights Institutions.
Human rights supervision should play a larger role
The report emphasizes that the extent of the linkages between human rights standards and the two agendas paves the way for human rights supervision and oversight mechanisms to play a much larger role in monitoring the agendas.
Furthermore, the report states that combining reporting on sustainable development and human rights can help to avoid duplication of efforts, and increase efficiency in reporting, as well as ensuring a closer linking of issues related to the implementation of the 2030 and 2063 Agendas with human rights. Moreover, it has an advantage of ensuring national anchorage - a key principle of both the 2030 and 2063 Agendas.
The guiding principles of both Agendas display many of the key features of a human rights-based approach to development including participation, accountability and non-discrimination. However they differ in their approaches and there are some key gaps from a human rights perspective. Human rights based approach principles should therefore be used to guide their implementation and monitoring and address these gaps.
Inthe context ofthe Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development held in May, DIHR is co-hosting a side-event to discuss some of the issues addressed in the report:
“Human rights and the 2030 and 2063 Agendas - Unleashing the potential of partnerships to promote human rights and the realization of Sustainable Development in the African region”
The African Union Commission, the African Peer Review Mechanism and the Regional Economic Communities among other regional bodies, charged with overseeing the implementation of the 2063 and 2030 Agendas have a specific mandate in the area of human rights.
With the analyses and insights this report provides, we aim to highlight how the 2030 and the 2063 Agenda can be mutually reinforcing and what role regional and national institutions with human rights mandates can play to ensure accountability in the implementation of both Agendas